Talk:Organizational culture

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[edit] Culture

Rather than saying that "culture involves the study of..." which only applies to the academic area of OD, I would say "culture collectively refers to values, history etc. Yaronf 22:20 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)


A few points, in bold brackets, taking text from paragraph one:

Organizational culture, or corporate culture, [these two are not the same, corporations are kinds of organizations]comprises the attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values of an organization [not a definition of culture by any social scientific standard]. It has been defined as "the specific collection of values and norms [these two things do not culture make]that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization. Organizational values [what happened to just values and norms? are these special kinds of values and norms the only ones orgs have, or do the people have them, or mgmt? extemely unclear]are beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members of an organization should pursue and ideas about the appropriate kinds or standards of behavior organizational members should use to achieve these goals. From organizational values develop organizational norms [this is not even close to a universally accepted, social scientific or even philosophical statement about the relationship between values and norms], guidelines or expectations that prescribe appropriate kinds of behavior by employees in particular situations and control the behavior of organizational members towards one another"[1]Senior management may try to determine a corporate culture. They may wish to impose corporate values and standards of behavior [on whom, what, and where]that specifically reflect the objectives of the organization. In addition, there will also be an extant internal culture within the workforce. Work-groups within the organization have their own behavioral quirks and interactions which, to an extent, affect the whole system. Task culture can be imported. For example, computer technicians will have expertise, language and behaviors gained independently of the organization, but their presence can influence the culture of the organization as a whole.

This paragraph far overreaches the author's educational and disciplinary limitations. Not at an encyclodepic level. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drewalanwalker (talk • contribs) 17:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion to improve text

Shouldn't the reference to 'Charles Handy popularized ....' read that he adapted the work of Robert Harrison? Ton Zijlstra 21:33 07 Jul 2006 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.160.170.75 (talk • contribs) 19:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

As a doctor of cultural anthropology who is also a culture change professional, it is clear that the uses of "culture" here are extremely weak and uninformed.

In terms of definition and use, the main approach to culture here would not earn a passing grade in introduction to cultural anthropology.

While the culture change industry in certain business circles is represented here, most of this article/entry is more about business training and little about that which the millions of organizational cultures in the world have in common.

I suggest creating a new entry that specifically frames most of this information in terms of "business scholarship and consultant uses of the term," which is only a part of this cncept as a whole. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drewalanwalker (talk • contribs) 17:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Attempts to classify company cultures

Given that culture and personality are homologous, attempts to classify the infinite range of company cultures comes up against the same problem as attempting to classify personalities (i.e. classify people). Good luck! Classification is an academic's activity. Understanding is not the same as classification. The applied question of the businessman/manager is more, "How and where do I move it?", [Barry Phegan, Feb 21, 2007] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.23.164.184 (talk • contribs) 19:14, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree - in fact I would not agree that many of the classifications are in fact culturally based in any case. It would be more relevant to discuss the behaviours (that could be both individual, team or organisational) that drive culture to be what it is within an environment? Neilmac, Nov 2007. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Neilmac7 (talk • contribs) 04:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] O'Donovan section pseudo-advertisement?

The O'Donovan section hardly belongs here. Its far to unestablished within the academic area to be listed along with established and accepted theories.. Listing ISBN etc within the article pretty much gives off an aura of self-promotion. Pseudo-advertisment? [Gordo - 9 mars 2007] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.227.78.238 (talk • contribs) 20:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Self promotion?

Isn't the directive communication element just self promotion?--Andrew Gardner 11:48, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adding a book

I work for Productivity Press, a business publisher. Under Sources, I would like to add one of our books, Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions, by David Mann. (Lean principles are gaining widespread acceptance in manufacturing, healthcare, and other industries. Look up Lean Manufacturing.) Details on the book can be found at http://www.productivitypress.com/productdetails.cfm?SKU=3225. Any objections? Ralph Bernstein LeanInsider 18:00, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I consider such links WP:SPAM, given that the website it links to is primarily for promotion and sale of a book. Further, since this article isn't about the book itself, the link appears off-topic. -- Ronz  19:57, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

If you truly think the book is off-topic, I can accept that. However, if a book is relevant to a topic, I don't see the harm in a link to a Web page for that book. There are plenty of books under plenty of topics on Wikipedia - and I mean books not published by our company - that have such links. Is there a guideline covering this issue? I'm not trying to argue over including this particular book - maybe it's not right on topic. But I will be interested in raising this issue on other topics with books that I believe are very much on topic. Also, what if a book is listed without a link? Does that make a difference? LeanInsider 20:06, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Listing the book is fine. Linking to a website that promotes the book is the problem. See WP:SPAM and WP:EL if you haven't yet. From my interpretation of WP:SPAM and WP:EL, I think a link to a book webpage such as that one are usually not appropriate. I even argue that they are not appropriate for articles about books themselves (such as for Wikinomics). -- Ronz  15:41, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I see that the guidelines on external links do suggest use of ISBN numbers for books rather than links to commercial bookselling sites. Fair enough. Now I have one more question, and a comment. Question: I've noticed a variety of books that have their own articles. You mentioned Wikinomics; I found several others in subject areas of interest to us (meaning books that compete with books we sell). Are there any guidelines regarding when an article can be written about a specific book? When is this acceptable, and when is it not? Comment: About a year or so ago, the publishing industry adopted a new system on ISBN numbers, replacing 10-digit ISBN numbers with 13-digit numbers. A great many books listed on Wikipedia still show the 10-digit numbers. There is a lot of work to be done to update these. LeanInsider 16:36, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:BK is the guideline article for notability/inclusion of books as article topics. There also appear to be two active projects related to books: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books and Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels. I'd be interested to hear what editors in those projects think of my advice to you. They certainly should be able to address your questions better than I can. -- Ronz  16:45, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Advert tag

I tagged the article with advert, though it needs an explanation. The article is poorly sourced, it attracts and still contains a lot of spam, and sections describing the theories of different researchers have been replaced by theories of other researchers. I'm going to try to find some time to go back through the edits and restore removed sections that might be worth keeping. After that the entire article needs to be examined for proper sourcing and presentation per WP:RS and WP:NPOV. --Ronz 17:59, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I would like to find some critical anthropological or sociological studies of corporate culture for citation, sourcing and a good rewrite. I think this article leans too far towards how to improve an organizational culture and not what makes one up (recognizable traits, common examples, etc.)Slavlin (talk) 05:17, 31 January 2008 (UTC)